my adventures with ALG, crosstalk, lakorn, and everyday life in thailand

Couch Potato Time

It’s been awhile since I’ve done mega TV-watching in Thai; and in fact lately I’ve spent a lot of time traveling or otherwise preoccupied, so that my Thai input has been mostly situational catch-as-catch-can — basically, the conversations that I’ve happened to get involved in (though in terms of deliberate input, there are some audio recordings I’ve been listening to).

Now back in Bangkok for a short while between trips, I decided to bolus myself with a good dose of Thai input; this has been mainly in the form of TV, but also a meeting with a conversation partner and some time working with the writing system.

Of course I’m watching a lakorn; I chose นางเอก (nangek) because, well, who could resist an obscure Ann Thongprasom lakorn with a title like that? (The nangek is the lead female role in a lakorn, as well as the actress who plays it). Nangek has its charms, particularly in some of the humorously quirky secondary characters, but it’s kind of slow and meandering. As usual I’m left wondering about all the stuff I don’t get because my Thai isn’t up to snuff, and if this would be a more entertaining experience if I understood everything.

Or maybe the genre has lost its appeal for me — I just didn’t feel very engaged by the last few lakorn that I watched.

Anyway, I’m mixing it up with plenty of other things: morning news programs (still going for crime, accident, and human interest stories, and doing my best to avoid the “hard” news of politics and business), Thai PBS documentaries, and a sitcom called เป็นต่อ (pentaw); plus various videos relating to the Thai writing system, which I’ll probably end up posting in the กขฃ series I’ve been working on.

Oh and, I don’t actually own a couch at this point…it’s more a state of mind. 🙂